By Simon Clark

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest U.S. lender, is launching a digital bank to offer consumer banking services in the U.K. for the first time.

The new bank will bear the Chase brand and will be based in London's Canary Wharf financial district, as well as operating a customer contact center in Edinburgh, JPMorgan said Wednesday. The digital bank has already hired 400 people in the U.K. and plans to add more as it grows, the company said.

JPMorgan enters a crowded digital marketplace in the U.K. for consumer banking. The market has flourished as regulators encouraged new startups, including Starling Bank Ltd. and Monzo Bank Ltd., to boost competition in the wake of the last global financial crisis. These so-called challenger banks have forced traditional lenders to improve their digital offerings but have struggled to earn profits.

"The U.K. has a vibrant and highly competitive consumer banking marketplace, which is why we've designed the bank from scratch to specifically meet the needs of customers here," said Gordon Smith, chief executive of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan.

The new JPMorgan bank will be led by Sanoke Viswanathan, previously the administrative chief and head of strategy at JPMorgan's corporate and investment bank.

JPMorgan last year considered making a bid for Starling Bank, founded by Anne Boden in 2014, according to people familiar with the situation. Starling has opened more than 2 million customer accounts with more than GBP3.6 billion in deposits, equivalent to $4.93 billion.

"Starling set out to disrupt the banking landscape and the fact that big banks are now copying us shows that we are succeeding. So we welcome competition," Ms. Boden said in an interview. "The big banks don't have a great record of creating challenger brands or building software in a cost-effective manner. They are copying our features, but they are unable to copy our cost base and our culture for innovation."

JPMorgan previously tried to launch a digital bank in U.S. cities and markets where it didn't have Chase branches, but closed the product, called Finn, in June 2019 after slow pickup. Bank executives have said they learned lessons from that program, including that the Chase brand resonated better than a new name. JPMorgan said Wednesday that it has about 55 million digitally active customers in the U.S.

David Benoit and

Dave Sebastian

contributed to this article.

Write to Simon Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

01-27-21 0931ET